SPBM recommends: Murderbullets

This has been online a while but I just found it today thanks to Matthew Craig pointing me to the incredible art on James Stokoe's blog. Stokoe is the creator of "wet, drippy" fantasy comic Orc Stain published by Image. Which I must admit has gone under my radar until now but the collected edition of the first five issues (seven issues have been published to date) has gone right to the top of my To Buy list.

Murderbullets is a complete 100 page comic hosted on Stokoe's site. I say 'complete' as it's all there, but as Stokoe explains on his blog its actually a prologue to a larger story.

"[Murderbullets] starting out as a entry for an anthology. The theme of the anthology was “The last comic you would ever draw”, so I took it rather literally and did 8 pages of a cracked out character drawing a book in a post apocalyptic wasteland that would grant him entry into the afterlife. Also, for some reason a moose was chained to his toilet. I got wrapped up in figuring out how this situation came to be and developed an elaborate back story involving time travelling, mutants, knife fights and cybernetic dolphin street gangs. Of course none of this would fit into an anthology, so I decided to take a stab at a full length book.

The pages here were to be the prologue of a much longer book. There would be 5 more chapters to the story following the rather unlikable Murderbullets character, but then Orc Stain came along which I decided would be a much better idea to pursue for the next few years. So now it sits idly on my hard drive, gathering e-dust. I don’t think I would be a decent human being if I released this prologue in print without finishing the rest of the book, but the magic of free internet lets me share it with you now.

Murderbullets is really fun stuff - if you like Tank Girl this should be right up your alley. Stokoe's style reminds me a lot of Jamie Hewlett with a shot of Paul Pope, a dash of Brendan McCarthy and a twist of Geoff Darrow for the details. Anyhoo, give it a read and see what you think yourself. If you have any recommendations or comics you want to review please email us or give us a shout on Twitter.